Smithfield High graduates go out on a celebratory note

SMITHFIELD — — It would be easy to confuse Saturday's Smithfield High School graduation ceremonies as a party. Throughout the event, students and graduation attendees contributed to a loud and proud atmosphere.

"You are not dreaming; it's real," said salutatorian Emily Basso in her light-hearted address, a trend that her fellow speakers followed.

Valedictorian Edmund Saw compared his days as an awkward, short elementary school student to the young, but still short, man at the top of his class. "We are the unstoppable and the mighty," he said. "We are certainly not done."

Saw told his classmates that despite graduating high school, learning should never stop.

Guest speaker Christopher Howard, the president of Hampden-Sydney College, urged graduates to be true, accountable, humble and courageous in their journeys.

"You don't have to be Superman," he said. "You just have to be a good man and a good woman."